Mormon Mission World

Tuesday, November 13, 2012

A Trip to Lovech

This
week, on a beautiful crisp fall day, we traveled to Lovech, which is one of the
oldest towns in Bulgaria. The city’s first inhabitants are thought to have been
a Thracian tribe. The city has been occupied by one group or another
since the 4th-3rd centuries BC.Lovech
has been part of the Roman, Byzantine and Ottoman Empires.

One of the two main attractions in Lovech is
the Lovech Castle, or Hisarja Fortress,
which is a former Roman citadel that overlooks the city. We climbed a long
stairway up the side of the hill to reach the Fortress at the top.

The view of the city and the surrounding area
was spectacular.It was apparent why
this hill and fortress were a coveted defense location.At the top is a statue of Vasil Levski who was a Bulgarianrevolutionary,
well-known as a national hero of Bulgaria

Nicknamed the Apostle of Freedom,
Levski led a revolutionary movement to liberate Bulgaria from Ottoman
rule. His statue towers over the city at 42 feet high.

.

The other main attraction is the Covered Bridge that connects the old and
new part of the city across the Osam River. The original bridge made possible
the settlement of the plain across the river from hills of the old town.It was destroyed by flood in 1872 and was
rebuilt by the citizens. Once again it was destroyed in 1925; this time by
fire. The citizens all contributed to the rebuilding of the bridge once again.Today the Covered Bridge houses shops, cafes
and restaurants and is a source of pride for the local population as well as a
large contributor to the economy.We did
our part to contribute to that economy as we strolled from one end to the
other.

While we are in Bulgaria we love these
opportunities to explore the beautiful countryside.The weather was perfect and the scenery
remarkable.We would hate to leave the
country having never had the chance to appreciate the rich culture that of the
area.

Our Address

Called to Serve

We received our mission call in June, 2011 and started our mission November 7th, 2011. We are called to serve in the Baltic Mission and were in Riga, Latvia as an office couple from November until March 2012.

We were reassigned to the Sofia, Bulgaria mission because the Baltic Mission had two office couples and the Bulgarian Mission had none. So here we are in Sofia, Bulgaria. You have to be flexible on a mission.